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The Distribution and Trends of Fog and Haze in the North China Plain Over the Past 30 Years

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The Distribution and Trends of Fog and Haze in the North China Plain Over the Past 30 Years Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 11949–11958, 2014 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/11949/2014/ doi:10.5194/acp-14-11949-2014 © Author(s) 2014. CC Attribution 3.0 License. The distribution and trends of fog and haze in the North China Plain over the past 30 years G. Q. Fu1,3, W. Y. Xu2,4, R. F. Yang1, J. B. Li5, and C. S. Zhao2 1Hebei Province Meteorological Service Centre, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China 2Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China 3Key Laboratory for Meteorology and Ecological Environment of Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China 4Key Laboratory for Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Composition, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China 5Hebei Province Meteorological Observatory, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China Correspondence to: C. S. Zhao ([email protected]) Received: 29 April 2014 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 19 June 2014 Revised: 29 September 2014 – Accepted: 30 September 2014 – Published: 13 November 2014 Abstract. Frequent low visibility, haze and fog events were ciated with haze days are evidently increasing, suggesting found in the North China Plain (NCP). Data throughout the that an increasing fraction of haze events are caused by the NCP during the past 30 years were examined to determine hygroscopic growth of aerosols, rather than simply by high the horizontal distribution and decadal trends of low visibil- aerosol loadings. ity, haze and fog events. The impact of meteorological factors such as wind and relative humidity (RH) on those events was investigated. Results reveal distinct distributions of haze and fog days, due to their different formation mechanisms. Low visibility, haze and fog days all display increasing trends of 1 Introduction before 1995, a steady stage during the period 1995–2003 and a drastically drop thereafter. All three events occurred most Low-visibility events caused by fog and severe haze events frequently during the heating season. Benefiting from emis- can be a heavy burden for air transport and on-road traffic. sion control measures, haze and fog both show decreasing The severe aerosol pollution that has led to the visibility im- trends in winter during the past 3 decades, while summertime pairment is also highly damaging to human health. haze displays continuous increasing trends. The distribution In developed countries such as the US and the Euro- of wind speed and wind direction as well as the topography pean countries, the employment of emission control mea- within the NCP has determinative impacts on the distribu- sures for sulfur, nitrogen, hydrocarbon compounds and par- tion of haze and fog. Weakened south-easterly winds in the ticulate matter has already resulted in significant declines in southern part of the NCP have resulted in high pollutant con- haziness and major improvements in visibility during the past centrations and frequent haze events along the foot of the 50 years (Schichtel et al., 2001; Doyle and Dorling, 2002; Taihang Mountains. The orographically generated boundary Molnár et al., 2008; Vautard et al., 2009). As a rapidly de- layer wind convergence line in the central area of the south- veloping country, however, air pollution problems have been ern NCP is responsible for the frequent fog events in this haunting China for the past few decades. Visibility has been region. Wind speed has been decreasing throughout the en- deteriorating in southeast (Deng et al., 2012) and southwest tire southern NCP, resulting in more stable atmospheric con- China (Fu and Wu, 2011) during the past 50 years, with only ditions and weaker dispersion abilities, calling for harder ef- a few places revealing slight increases in recent years. Six forts to control emissions to prevent haze events. Haze events Chinese megacities have suffered from continuously decreas- are strongly influenced by the ambient RH. RH values asso- ing visibilities in the past 30 years (Chang et al., 2009). Over- all, visibilities on clear days decreased significantly during Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 11950 G. Q. Fu et al.: The distribution and trends of fog and haze in the North China Plain the period 1960–1990 over all of China; trends thereafter, however, have not been consistent (Wu et al., 2012). The visibility trends were often attributed to the decrease in sulfur dioxide emissions or aerosol concentrations; how- ever, no causality could be established so far. Both SO2 and aerosol pollution have been proved most severe in the North China Plain (NCP), due to the rapid economic growth and the high population density (Xu et al., 2011). As a result, low-visibility events frequently occur. Many in situ measure- ments and studies have already been performed to study the light scattering properties of aerosols and their impact on horizontal visibility under different relative humidity (RH) in the NCP as part of the Haze in China (HaChi) Campaign (Chen et al., 2012; Ma et al., 2011). Results show that, un- der low RH, low-visibility events are mostly induced by the heavy aerosol loading, while under high RH, the influence of aerosol hygroscopic growth becomes stronger and can lead to low-visibility events even under moderate aerosol pollution levels. However, only few studies have been performed to in- vestigate the spatial distribution of low-visibility events and Figure 1. The location of the measurement sites (circle), the area their overall trends during the past few decades in the NCP. of study (red line) and the regional topography by Danielson and Zhao et al. (2011) analysed the visibility trends in the NCP, Gesch (2011) (colour). suggesting declining visibilities before 1998 and increasing ones during the period 2006–2008, with stronger visibility deterioration trends in the summer season due to higher RH and lower wind speeds. Both haze and fog events could thus were used to analyse the long-term temporal and spatial vari- be responsible for low-visibility events; however, those were ation of low visibility, haze and fog events. rarely differentiated in the study of visibility trends, which Both haze and fog can lead to low-visibility events. The made it difficult to find the reason behind those visibility vari- formations of haze and fog are two distinctly different pro- ations. cesses. Therefore, it is necessary to differentiate between In this study, a detailed analysis on the decadal variation those two events when analysing low-visibility trends, dis- and spatial distribution of low visibility, fog and haze events tributions and variations. In this work, low-visibility events in the most polluted southern part of the NCP will be per- were defined as days with visibility at 14:00 LT below 10 km. formed, and the impact of wind and RH on those events will Those low-visibility events that were not associated with fog, be revealed. precipitation, dust storms, smoke, snow storms etc. were de- fined as haze events. Fog events mostly occur during early morning, rarely lasting until 14:00 LT. Therefore, a day was defined as a foggy day if the occurrence of fog was recorded 2 Data and methodology at any time during the day. For each station the occurrences of low-visibility days, The North China Plain (NCP) is surrounded to the north by hazy days and foggy days during the period 1981–2010 the Yan Mountains, to the west by the Taihang Mountains were counted to analyse the spatial distribution of those and to the east by the Bohai Sea (Fig. 1). The western part three types of events. OMI Level 3 SO2 (OMSO2 of the NCP is affected by the warm and dry wind coming off Readme file v1.1.1, http://so2.gsfc.nasa.gov/Documentation/ the eastern Taihang Mountain slopes, which lead to increased OMSO2ReleaseDetails_v111_0303.htm) planetary bound- surface stability. Under the influence of the Bohai Sea, the ary layer column concentrations during 2005–2012 were east coast of the NCP often experiences moderate to strong used to show the correlation between the distribution of SO2 winds. The southern part of the NCP is rather flat and is an and the occurrence of haze days. important water vapour transport passageway. The spatial average annual and 10-year moving average The locations of the 64 meteorological observation sites frequency of occurrence during the period 1981–2010 were selected for this study are displayed in Fig. 1, with the names used to analyse the trend of the three types of events over of the sites given in Fig. 2a. All sites are located in the south- those 30 years. The trends are then compared to the SO2 ern part of the NCP, where the air pollution is most severe. emission trends inferred from the China statistical yearbooks The visibility, RH, wind speed and weather phenomenon ob- (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 1995–2010). The served at 14:00 local time (LT) during the period 1981–2010 spatial averages of monthly frequency of occurrence during Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 11949–11958, 2014 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/11949/2014/ G. Q. Fu et al.: The distribution and trends of fog and haze in the North China Plain 11951 Figure 2. (a) Average OMI SO2 PBL column amount during the period 2005–2012 with the location of the 64 stations and the number of (b) low visibility, (c) haze and (d) fog days during the period 1981–2010 in the southern NCP. the period 1981–2010 were applied to examine the long-term to the total average RH was compared against the decadal trend of those three types of events in different seasons. variation in annual haze days. The seasonal–decadal trend The average distribution and the linear trend of wind of the frequency of occurrence of haze-related RH val- speeds during the period 1981–2010 were respectively cal- ues falling in the range of RH < 50 %, 50 % < RH < 60 %, culated to reveal their impact on the distribution and trend 60 % < RH < 70 %, RH > 70 % was analysed to show the of the frequency of occurrence of the three types of events.
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